“That’s you,” he said, starting to walk again, so I started to walk too, downhill now. “That’s not the magic. I like you, I really do. But I thought if we could break up, and you agreed we could, then it wasn’t doing that, and it would be all right.”
“So you don’t actually want to break up?”
“Not if you don’t,” he said.
What I know about magic that he doesn’t is how tricky it is, and how much easier it is to get people to do things they want to do anyway. It would only prove anything if we did break up, not if we just agreed that we theoretically could. But ... I didn’t want to. “I don’t want to,” I said.
“What did you say to her?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Little Miss Hitler, back in the cafe?”
I snorted. “Her name’s Karen. I said obviously I couldn’t go to a disco, and then I just smiled. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.” We were coming down to the bookshop, and he stopped again.
“Then just keep smiling. I won’t see Shirley again.”
“I don’t care if you see Shirley, as long as I know about it,” I said. “... I think.” I was really clear on the theory of this from Heinlein, I wasn’t quite so sure about the practice.
“She’s a moron,” he said, which was very reassuring. It’s nice to be wanted for something real.
We crossed into Poacher’s Wood, and walked down to where the ruined walls are. The snowdrops were dead. There were leaves coming through, but no other flowers yet. The place was swarming with fairies, mostly gnarly treelike ones, who didn’t pay any attention to us. Wim could sort of see them, he said he could see them sideways. We sat on the wall for a while, looking at them. Then when we started to get up, he happened to brush against my walking stick, and made a choking sound. “Now I can really see them,” he said. He sat down again beside me, holding the stick on his lap. “Man,” he exclaimed, rather inadequately.
Ages afterwards, after he’d been watching the fairies for a long time, I said it was time to go, and reached for my stick back. Without it he was back to only half-seeing them. “I wish I knew what they were,” he said, as we walked back up into town. “Could I have that stick? I mean, do you have another one of those?”
“I do, but the other one is metal and hideous, and this one gives me strength. The fairies gave it to me.”
“Maybe they gave it to you so I could see them,” he suggested. “All of those colours and shapes.” He sounded drunk. They were just fairies, and not even doing anything especially interesting.
“Maybe,” I said. “I need it now, anyway.”
He took my hand as we went through the trees.
“I’m sorry about the dancing thing,” he said. “I don’t mean Shirley, I did that on purpose, I mean the actual dancing. I wasn’t thinking about that, and I wouldn’t want to make you feel bad about not being able to do it.”
“That’s all right,” I said, though it wasn’t. My leg is about back to where it was before the traction wrecked it. I have good days and bad days. They said it was going to keep on being like that. Maybe the acupuncture will help, and maybe I can learn to do it myself, and that would help, but I’m not going to be dancing any time soon.
It was almost time to catch the bus, so we walked on through town. “So, Tuesday night, Thursday afternoon and next Saturday? If that’s all that’s on offer, then I’ll take it,” he said.
“Next weekend is half term,” I said. “All of next week is. So Saturday’s out.”
“Are you going away?”
“I’m going to spend one night in the Old Hall with Daniel, and then go down to Aberdare for a few days, to see Auntie Teg and my grandfather.”
“And kill your mother?” he asked. “No, I know, but I could. That wouldn’t be against any ancient prohibitions.”
“In the ancient prohibitions I’ve seen, I wouldn’t even be able to share a meal with someone who had killed my mother, whatever I thought of her,” I said, though I was mainly going from Mary Renault, and not any actual ancient prohibitions. Funny how nobody teaches ancient prohibitions any more. “Anyway, there’s no need.”
“I could come down with you.”
“Don’t be silly, where would you stay?” I asked. “Anyway, you have to work. I’ll see you when I come home.”
“I’ll miss you,” he said, and kissed me very gently for a long time.
Well, at least it isn’t boring.
Sunday 10th February 1980
There was a frost this morning. When I woke up and looked out of the window everything was crisply outlined in white. It had melted by the time we went to church.
The sermon was all about giving thanks, and how we shouldn’t just skim through our blessings but choose two special things to give thanks for. So, mentally, when it was prayertime, I gave thanks for Wim and the interlibrary loan system.
I wrote to Auntie Teg saying I’d be there next Sunday. I hadn’t bought a card for Grampar yesterday, or last week either, because Wim distracted me both times. I’ll take one with me.
My new worry about Wim is that it’s the possibility of magic that he wants, not really me.
Monday 11th February 1980
The Persian Boy is so wonderful. It might be her best book. Stimulated not by it directly but by the general thought of her books, I have also raced through the Phaedrus and started The Laws and got a bit bogged down.
Miss Carroll seems to approve of me reading things that aren’t SF. She started a conversation about ancient Greece, and mentioned the possibility of me doing an O Level in Greek while I’m doing my A Levels. I don’t know if I’m going to be doing A Levels here or what, but if I am and I do, that would be a really good plan. I don’t think they’d let me do what Wim’s doing and keep mixing arts and sciences. Besides, I’d like to do English, history, and Latin, which is a very usual and conventional mix. I’d like to keep on with either physics or chemistry too, but as Miss Carroll pointed out, not having the maths would make that difficult. I might just scrape a pass in maths, if I’m lucky, but that’s the best I can hope for.
At the doctor’s, I asked if I was seeing him in confidence, and he said of course. Then I asked if he’d give me a prescription for the Pill. He asked if I was sexually active, and I said not yet, but I was thinking of becoming so. He looked at my date of birth and tutted a little, but he gave me the prescription. He said I’d have to take it for a whole month before it would work, that I had to start taking it on the day after a period, and that if I missed one pill after that I’d be okay, but no more than that, and I should take them at the same time every day. I picked the prescription up in Boots on the way back. I also bought a packet of condoms (be prepared) and a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, which was more to disguise the other things than because I wanted it, though I ate it anyway.
I’m keeping the pills and the condoms in my bag, because there isn’t anywhere else safe.
Tuesday 12th February 1980
Deirdre nearly got caught copying my Virgil today. There are two verbs, “progredior” and “proficiscor” and they’re both weirdly in the passive all the time, and they both start “pro” and one means “advance” and the other “set out” and I always confuse them, and I did in my prep, which Deirdre had copied. Miss Martin, who’s very sharp, gave us both a stern look when Deirdre read that bit aloud, and she said that mistakes with passive verbs seem to be catching, and then she had Deirdre come up to the front and do the next bit, the bit we hadn’t been set to prepare. She didn’t make too bad a muck of it, so I thought we’d got away with it. Then she made me construe the next part, again unseen. After class, while the bell was ringing and everyone was charging off down the corridor for physics, she stopped me and said “Did you and Deirdre co-operate a little on that piece of Virgil, Morwenna?”